âThis is a company that not only is Jared Kushner an investor in, he co-founded in 2014,â Schweizer noted. âSo this is not some passive investment that one of his advisers said to put money into, and was forgotten about. He co-founded it. Itâs a real estate tech startup. Obviously it has a lot of ambitions. Heâs got a lot of money in it, and he failed to disclose it on his financial forms.â

Thatâs a massive, massive problem.
The whole purpose of disclosures â whether you are asking the Clintons
to do it, Barack Obama to do it, Jared Kushner to do it, or Mitch
McConnell to do it â is so the American people can know: who are they
financially dependent on, who do they have ties to, who might have
leverage over them?â Schweizer explained.

âThe problem is that Jared Kushnerâs
position in the White House, he is essentially the liaison with the
business community. Heâs not in charge of protocol. Heâs not in charge
of public outreach. He is basically the go-between with the business
community, so he is ground zero for precisely the kinds of concerns and
issues that one might have about very, very troubling financial
transactions,â he said.

Schweizer conceded that âitâs always
hard to look into somebodyâs headâ and judge whether such a filing
omission was a mistake, or an intentional act of deception.

âPeople that defend Jared Kushner
could say, âWell, look, heâs got a lot of assets, a lot of companies.â
Hereâs the problem: itâs hard even with Jared Kushnerâs wealth to hide
your stake, your involvement, with one billion dollars in loans. So I
think this is a massive problem,â he contended.

âI think a couple of things need to
happen,â Schweizer suggested. âNumber One, Jared Kushner needs to look
at who filled out the disclosure forms for him. If heâs saying he had no
involvement with lacking this disclosure, somebody needs to be fired.â

âI think the second question needs to
be: what other investments could be out there lurking that weâre not
aware of?â he asked. âTo be clear, it is a federal penalty, it is a
crime, to fail to disclose things on your financial forms. Iâm not a
lawyer, so I couldnât speak to this particular case, but these rules and
laws have real teeth because they present real problems.â

âOn a scale from 1 to 10, I would put
this at a 7,â he concluded, responding to SiriusXM host Alex Marlowâs
request to rank the severity of this transparency issue.

Marlow referred back to a recent interview he gave to New York Magazine, in
which he observed that Kushner rarely grants interviews or issues
public statements, so it is difficult to draw conclusions about his
agenda, or measure how much influence he truly wields in the Trump White
House.

âEvery president has advisers that
have input, that offer insight, but those advisers â whether itâs Trump
or Obama â generally thereâs a good public knowledge about them, because
they serve them during the campaign. Theyâve been public officials, or
outspoken on issues in one way or the other,â Schweizer noted. âJared
Kushner has not. During the campaign, he said very, very little
publicly. Before that, in terms of his politics or his policy views,
very, very hard to discern. And he, in a sense, kind of emerges out of
nowhere to become this very powerful figure in the Trump White House.â

âNow, President Trump certainly has a
right to do that,â he allowed. âBut I think with that elevation of
Jared Kushner needs to come, in a sense, allowing us to lift the hood up
from the car and see what kind of engine is underneath there â to see
really what his views are, have him do some public interviews about what
his positions are.â

Schweizer reiterated that Kushner should expect heightened scrutiny because he is âa liaison with the business community.â

âHe is now the sort of go-between,
between President Trump and people like Goldman Sachs and/or George
Soros that might have business in the White House,â he elaborated.
âThese are people he does business with, and has commingled assets with.
The American people need to know, and for a campaign that I think
âdraining the swampâ and transparency were such important issues, this
circumstance I think demands that kind of response.â

Schweizer called for âsome sort of an independent audit,â a term he disliked using but found closest to what he envisions.

âThere needs to be somebody
independently that goes in and looks through his assets to make sure
that there arenât other big conflicts that are undisclosed lurking,â he
said. âThe problem is, you really canât have confidence in whoever
prepared these forms for Jared Kushner because youâve got these gaps. I
would be surprised if there arenât more of these kinds of mistakes or
omissions, because it just seems to me this one is so big and so
glaring, itâs hard for me to believe that it was just an oversight, and
itâs hard for me to believe that this is the only one that exists.â

Marlow asked if Kushner specifically
having ties with Goldman Sachs and George Soros would cause problems
with Trump voters, of if such dealings should simply be understood as
inescapable aspects of New York City high finance.

âI think from the policy standpoint I
would have less concern about this, precisely for what you said,â
Schweizer replied. âLook, when youâre looking at these large investments
where you have very wealthy people or their offices investing,
co-investing, you find this a fair amount. So I donât think this
necessarily says anything about Jared Kushnerâs politics or policy
views, the fact that heâs co-invested with George Soros.â

âBut I do think, as we talked about earlier, there is this mystery. What actually are his
views about crony capitalism?â he continued. âWhat are his views about
the tax rate? What are his views about the Export-Import Bank, and those
other issues that have been lurking out there for so long?â

âHe obviously has an important voice
and is going to be a player at the table. People know what everybody
else around the table is thinking. People basically know what Gary Cohn
thinks. They know what Steve Bannon thinks. People donât know what Jared
Kushner thinks, and I think the American people, particularly the
people that have supported him, would expect to know and want to know
what those views are,â Schweizer said.

He pointed out that Kushner appears to have an extraordinarily broad portfolio in the Trump administration, having turned up in Iraq last month.

âIs he a diplomat? Is he a liaison
with the business community? Is he doing both of those things? If so,
what are his views? Does he have any background or any qualifications in
those areas?â Schweizer asked. âI think these are all legitimate
questions that people have a right to ask, and to want to know. And yet,
itâs kind of shrouded with mystery.â

âI can tell you, if you look through
American history, any time there have been family members sort of
intermingled with an American presidency â whether thatâs a Kennedy
administration, and Bobby Kennedy is Attorney General, or going back to
Woodrow Wilson where he was basically disabled and his wife ran the
country â this is the lurking concern and fear that people have,â he
recalled. âThat is, who is actually making the decisions? You really
canât fire a family member per se. Theyâre going to remain your family
member. So it creates a different kind of dynamic and environment, that
somebody canât just be told to go away if they make a massive mistake or
engage in destructive behaviors. It presents a unique challenge.â

âI think thatâs why itâs important
for the Trump White House to get out in front of his, and this issue of
disclosure. This is sort of Clean Government 101,â he said.

Schweizer recalled calling out
Hillary Clintonâs campaign manager John Podesta for âhis failure to
disclose his ties to this company that was funded in part by a Russian
fund that Vladimir Putin ran.â

âWe were right to call him out,â he
maintained. âThe same thing needs to occur here. This is basic stuff
that needs to be done, and the fact that itâs not being done at this
point, a hundred days in, is extremely troubling.â //BreitBart